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(Fig. 3) underscore the importance of doing
everything possible to find and hang on to
families for kids in care.
Knowing we can do better, a broad array
of NC stakeholders has developed a plan to
help us bring about needed changes. This
article will explain our state’s vision for the
future, our new Diligent Recruitment and
Retention (DRR) plan, and what it means for
you and your agency.
A Need for Improvement
In 2015 federal reviewers were concerned
our state could not show that routine, state-wide
diligent efforts were being made to
find families for children with special needs
and families that reflect the ethnic and racial
diversity of the children in DSS custody. They
also noted that NC did not provide con-sistent
standards for diligent
Volume 22, Number 3
June 2017
This publication for child
welfare professionals is
produced by the North
Carolina Division of Social
Services and the Family
and Children’s Resource
Program, part of the Jordan
Institute for Families within
the School of Social Work
at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In summarizing research, we
try to give you new ideas for
refining your practice. How-ever,
this publication is not
intended to replace child
welfare training, regular su-pervision,
or peer consulta-tion—
only to enhance them.
Let us hear from you!
To comment about some-thing
that appears in Prac-tice
Notes, please contact:
John McMahon
Jordan Institute for Families
School of Social Work
UNC–Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550
jdmcmaho@unc.edu
Newsletter Staff
Sarah Marsh
John McMahon
Laura Phipps
Visit Our Website
www.practicenotes.org
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment of Families
for Children in Foster Care
Recruitment and retention of families for
children in foster care matters a great deal.
When we have enough foster and adop-tive
parents and kin caregivers, it is easier
to place children in their home communities
and school districts. More siblings can stay
together. Careful matching with caregivers
is easier. Children awaiting adoption don’t
have to wait as long for forever families.
Understanding this, North Carolina built
a solid network of state, county, and private
agencies to find and support resource families.
See Figure 1 for a snapshot of this network.
But we’ve had a bit of a wake-up call.
In 2015, federal reviewers concluded we
need to improve our system for recruiting
and retaining resource families. Rising num-bers
of children in foster care (Fig. 2) and
declines in adoptions of waiting children continued next page
NC Foster Care & Adoption Facts
As of April 30, 2017
Foster Care Agencies
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
• 81 private child-placing agencies
• 97 residential facilities
Foster Homes
6,843 licensed foster homes:
• 38% were family foster homes
supervised by county DSS agencies
• 58% were either family or
therapeutic foster homes
supervised by private agencies
• 4% were residential/group/
institutions
Adoption Agencies
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
• 42 private adoption agencies
Adoptive Homes
• 11,335 children adopted from
foster care from 2007 to 2014
Sources: NC DSS, 2017a & 2017b; USDHHS, 2017
FIGURE 1 FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
Duncan, et al., 2017
US DHHS, 2017
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
Number of Children in Foster Care in NC
Number of NC Children Adopted from Foster Care
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
1,400
1,600
1,800
2
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment continued from previous page
Beliefs behind the Plan
recruitment, nor did it have a system
for monitoring diligent recruitment.
After the federal review, NC deter-mined
that strengthening and refram-ing
our state’s diligent recruitment
plan would be the best way forward.
As part of its federal Program Improve-ment
Plan (PIP), NC promised to recre-ate
our DRR plan and address federal
reviewers’ concerns by Dec. 31, 2018.
Creating the Plan
By the time the PIP was approved on
Jan. 1, 2017, efforts were already well
underway to improve diligent recruit-ment
in NC. In fall 2016, the NC Divi-sion
of Social Services approached the
National Resource Center for Diligent
Recruitment (NRC-DR) for assistance.
By October 2016, a workgroup dedi-cated
to creating a new DRR plan
had formed. The group’s participants
included representatives from the
Division, county DSS agencies, and
private agencies. Two consultants
from the NRC-DR offered the group
guidance and support.
To determine what should be in
the new plan, the workgroup held
regional stakeholder meetings
between October 2016 and Janu-ary
2017. These were attended by
more than 200 people with ties to
the recruitment of resource families,
and included Division staff, county
DSS staff, private agency staff, former
foster youth, foster/adoptive parents,
GALs, and others.
The workgroup then compiled the
notes from these meetings and, with
the help of the NRC-DR, crafted the
plan in spring 2017. This was an
extremely collaborative process; the
plan represents the hard work of hun-dreds
of people across the state who
are invested in the diligent recruitment
and retention of resource parents.
The Division released the new DRR
plan June 15, 2017. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2stwqsF.
NC’s Vision for DRR
Although many people and agen-cies
in North Carolina contribute to
recruitment and retention of resource
families, we are all ultimately a part
of one, unified child welfare system.
The new DRR plan is a vehicle to help
us improve our results and the way we
work together. As a starting point, the
plan lays out the beliefs and values at
the heart of what we do. You can find
these in the box at right.
The plan then articulates a long-term
vision of a future in which North
Carolina will eventually have:
• A structured statewide approach
to recruitment and retention.
• An efficient recruitment pro-cess
that is easy for prospective
resource families to understand.
• Placement stability for children
served by the foster care system.
• Placement of children in their
home communities and school
districts.
• Sibling groups placed together.
• A diverse population of foster and
adoptive families, including but
not limited to diversity of ethnicity,
race, language, and location.
• Public and private child welfare
staff who are familiar with North
Carolina’s Diligent Recruitment
and Retention Plan.
• Consistent engagement in techni-cal
assistance, information shar-ing,
and collaboration around
DRR by the Division, county DSS
agencies, and private agencies.
• Statewide use of a customer ser-vice
approach to DRR, with posi-tive
feedback from foster and
adoptive families.
• Involvement in the DRR process
by resource families and youth
served by the foster care pro-gram.
• Statewide capacity to collect,
assess, and interpret data to
inform DRR activities.
Building on a Solid Foundation
Before we delve into the changes the
new plan brings, a few words of reas-surance.
While the plan brings new
expectations, the basics of our work
will remain the same. We will continue
to have a state-supervised, county-administered
system in which coun-ties
partner to varying degrees with
private agencies to recruit resource
families and supervise foster homes
and provide adoption services. Pro-spective
resource parents will still be
free to choose to be licensed as foster
parents and/or be approved as adop-tive
parents by either a public or pri-vate
agency. And, the NC Division of
Social Services will continue to provide
supports to public and private agen-cies,
especially through its NC Kids
Adoption and Foster Care Network.
New Expectations
What does this new plan mean for
NC’s child-placing agencies and child
welfare professionals?
County agencies must develop
annual DRR Plans. The statewide DRR
plan provides a template agencies
must use to develop this annual plan.
Using this template will ensure county
child welfare agencies and the state
take a consistent, structured approach
to DRR, one that involves measuring
progress toward concrete goals. Note:
• Value all prospective,
current, and former
foster and adoptive
parents
• Value all caregivers
and encourage the licensure of kin-ship
placements whenever possible
• Provide and value opportunities for
support, engagement, and training
of resource families
• We have an obligation to build our
capacity to use data to inform dili-gent
recruitment and retention of
foster and adoptive parents
3
ITEMS ON DATA PROFILE
• Number of children in care
• Characteristics of children in care
– Race/Ethnicity
– Age
• Number where ICWA applies
• Characteristics of families available
– Race/Ethnicity
• Average time from initial inquiry to
licensure
• Total licensed beds
• Total truly available beds
• Children placed out of county and/or
with outside agencies due to lack of
available families
• Number of placement disruptions or
placement changes
• Option to track additional data points
while plans begin with a template, the
expectation is that each county’s plan
will be unique, reflecting differences
in culture, geography, etc.
Each county agency’s DRR plan will
have three parts:
1. Information Gathering. Here the
agency captures details about how it
staffs and supports recruitment and
retention, the data it collects and uses
to monitor DRR, the strategies it uses,
the barriers it experiences, and more.
2. Plan Development Process. Every
plan should be developed with input
from an inclusive group of stakehold-ers.
In this section the agency records
things such as who was involved in
plan development, how the agency
will build the capacity needed to
measure outcomes and success, and
whether the agency has technical
assistance needs related to DRR.
3. Plan and Measurement. This part
of the plan lays out concrete strategies
for achieving the four goals identified
in the box above. Agencies have the
option of setting additional goals for
themselves in their plans.
Each county’s DRR plan will also
serve as its annual Multi-Ethnic Place-ment
Act (MEPA) plan. Please refer
to the new statewide DRR plan for
guidance and information about the
overlap between DRR and the require-ments
of MEPA.
When their plans are completed,
counties will submit them to their
assigned NC Kids Consultant. If
needed, the consultant will work with
the county to develop a plan for tech-nical
assistance around DRR.
Private child-placing agencies are
encouraged—but not required—to
develop annual DRR plans. Private
agencies that develop DRR plans are
encouraged to share them with the
Division and the county DSS agencies
with whom they partner.
All agencies must develop and
use data profiles. So that we can
make data-driven decisions regard-ing
diligent recruitment and retention,
each county DSS and each private
child-placing agency must complete
a Diligent Recruitment and Reten-tion
Data Profile. This profile must be
updated quarterly and shared with
the Division every year on Aug. 1.
The Division will then share compre-hensive
statewide data on an annual
basis to help inform ongoing local-ized
and statewide recruitment and
retention efforts.
To develop their data profiles,
agencies should use the DRR Plan’s
Data Profile template. The box above
depicts the kind of data points col-lected
in this template.
The NC Division of Social Services
understands that agencies currently
vary widely in their capacity work with
DRR data. If your agency needs tech-nical
assistance in this area, please
contact NC Kids (nc.kids@dhhs.
nc.gov; 877-625-4371).
Implementation Timeline
DRR Plans. In the coming year
counties will develop and submit their
DRR plans to their assigned NC Kids
Consultant in two cohorts, or phases.
Phase 1 counties must submit their
plans by Feb. 1, 2018. Phase 2 coun-ties
must submit plans by May 1,
2018. Please refer to the next page to
see which phase your county is in and
who your county’s consultant is.
All DRR plans submitted next year
will be for SFY 2018-19 and be effec-tive
July 1, 2018. The expectation is
that county agencies will update and
resubmit these plans to their assigned
NC Kids Consultant by September 1
of each year, starting in SFY 2019-20.
Data Profiles. County DSS and
private child-placing agencies must
submit their first DRR data profile to
the Division on August 1, 2019. Data
profiles must be updated and resub-mitted
to the Division by August 1 of
each year thereafter.
Conclusion
North Carolina has a new plan and
approach for the diligent recruitment
and retention of foster and adoptive
families for children in foster care.
This plan and approach will help us
increase our use of data, the extent
to which we involve key stakehold-ers,
and the quality of our customer
service. This, in turn, will ultimately
strengthen our ability to achieve the
outcomes we seek for children and
their families. 
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment continued from previous page
FOUR DRR PLAN GOALS
1. Recruit and maintain a sufficient
pool of ethnically and racially
diverse families who can provide
ongoing safety for and meet the
needs of children in foster care
2. State, counties, and private child-placing
agencies have the capacity
and ability to use data to inform
and monitor diligent recruitment
and retention efforts throughout
NC
3. Excellent customer service pro-vided
to prospective, current, and
former foster, adoptive, and kin-ship
families
4. Excellent customer service provided
to internal and external community
partners/stakeholders
4
Implementation of NC’s Diligent Recruitment Plan:
County Assignments by Phase
Phase 1 Counties (DRR plan due to NC Kids Consultant by Feb. 1, 2018)
Alamance Davidson Macon Randolph Yadkin
Alexander Davie Madison Robeson Yancey
Alleghany Duplin Martin Rutherford
Avery Edgecombe McDowell Stanly
Bladen Gaston Mitchell Stokes
Brunswick Gates Montgomery Surry
Burke Granville Moore Swain
Caldwell Halifax Nash Warren
Catawba Haywood Northampton Wayne
Chowan Hertford Pasquotank Transylvania
Cleveland Iredell Perquimans Tyrell
Columbus Johnston Person Union
Currituck Lee Polk Vance
Phase 2 Counties (DRR plan due to NC Kids Consultant by May 1, 2018)
Anson Dare Jones Rockingham
Ashe Durham Lenoir Rowan
Beaufort Forsyth Lincoln Sampson
Bertie Franklin Mecklenburg Scotland
Buncombe Graham Mitchell Wake
Cabarrus Greene New Hanover Washington
Camden Guilford Onslow Watauga
Caswell Harnett Orange Wilkes
Chatham Henderson Pamlico Wilson
Cherokee Hoke Pender
Clay Hyde Pitt
Craven Jackson Richmond
NC Kids Consultant County Assignments
Alamance through Cumberland Johnston through Polk
Shirley Williams Kerri Shiflett
919-527-6404 919-527-6366
shirley.williams@dhhs.nc.gov kerri.shiflett@dhhs.nc.gov
Currituck through Jackson Randolph through Yancey
Britt Cloudsdale Mary Mackins
919-527-6358 919-527-6287
britt.cloudsdale@dhhs.nc.gov mary.mackins@dhhs.nc.gov
Let’s Be Clear with Families: “Fostering to Adopt” Is Not Really a Thing
If your responsibilities include talking to prospective foster
and adoptive parents, it is likely you’ve heard families
say they want to “foster to adopt.” It’s a common phrase
and, at first glance, conveys a simple meaning: the family
would like to foster with the end goal of adopting a child
placed in their home.
Because this phrase is so widely used, many families—
and even some social workers—are confused to learn that
“fostering to adopt,” as a concept, does not exist. Indeed,
because the “foster to adopt” mindset can undermine our
efforts to help children and families, we must be ready to
set the record straight whenever this term comes up.
Confl icting Goals
To see why the “foster to adopt” idea is problematic, con-sider
the primary goals of foster care and adoption. When
a child enters foster care, the goal of the child’s team is
almost always to reunify the child with the child’s family.
As a member of the team, the foster parent’s role is to
care for the child, keep them safe, and meet their ongoing
needs until it is safe for the child to return home.
As members of the team, foster parents must do what
they can to maintain and strengthen the bond between chil-dren
and their families. They must buy in to the practice of
shared parenting, which builds trust between the biological
parents and foster parents and encourages consistency and
security for the child. Shared parenting only works when all
members of the team view the child’s stay in foster care as
temporary and are motivated to achieve reunification.
The primary goal of adoption, conversely, is perma-nency
with someone other than the biological parents.
Simply put, “foster to adopt” doesn’t work because the
goals of foster care and adoption are inherently in conflict.
When we ignore this conflict and license families whose
primary aim is to adopt their foster child, we set the stage
for disappointment and disaster. These families may be
unwilling to engage in activities that would help us achieve
reunification. In the worst cases, they may even sabotage
the team’s efforts, which can lead to placement disruptions,
longer foster care stays, and more trauma for children.
Send a Clear Message
So, what’s to be done? As professionals, we need to be
clear with families that the idea that people can “foster to
adopt” is a myth. It’s our responsibility to ensure families
understand the primary goal of foster care, and to prop-erly
assess the motivations of families who seek to foster.
As we assess families, we should encourage them to care-fully
and deliberately search their hearts to understand
their own motivations. Being open to the idea of adoption
is very different from having a goal of adoption.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with
wanting to permanently add children to
one’s family through adoption. We owe
a great debt to everyone willing to open
their home to our kids in this way!
But if we identify prospective foster
families we think may not be able to put
their personal adoption goals aside as
foster parents, our choice is clear. We should never try to
convince anyone to pursue fostering if it would not be a
good fit for them. If you are a foster parent recruiter, being
clear that there is no such thing as “foster to adopt” may
mean referring more families to agencies serving families
who exclusively seek to adopt. In the long run, though, this
is a better use of your resources, and will result in better
outcomes for children and families.
In North Carolina there are many different agencies
with different methods, but we are all ultimately a part of
one, unified child welfare system. If your agency is not the
best fit for a family because of their motivations or because
of your focus area, there is likely another agency out there
for that family. Partnering across agencies as we recruit
foster and adoptive parents opens more homes for more
kids, and helps children exit foster care sooner. 
Words to Use with Families
Here are some things it can be helpful to say to help fami-lies
understand the different goals of foster care and adop-tion,
and why understanding their motivation for fostering
is so important.
If you keep thinking about adoption every time you get
a placement, it’s going to make your role as a foster parent
very difficult. When the team is working on reunification, you
may find yourself hoping it falls apart so you get the chance
to adopt. When it’s time to engage in shared parenting, your
heart won’t be in it 100%.
Being a foster family who is open to the idea of adop-tion
is MUCH different than a foster family with the goal of
adopting.
The bottom line is, check your motivation. Examine your
heart. If you became a foster parent, would you be looking
at each child as potentially being your own, or would you be
able to cultivate a good relationship between the children
and biological family and love the children as if they were
your own?
If the answer is yes, you have nothing to worry about.
If you’re not sure or your answer is no, you may need to
think a bit more before pursuing licensure.
Adapted from Sirratt, 2016
by Britt Cloudsdale, NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care Network, NC Division of Social Services
Britt Cloudsdale
5
6
Supporting and Developing the Resource Families You Have
We ask a lot from resource fami-lies.
We want them to play a variety
of complex roles: reunification part-ner
with the birth family, contributing
member of the team of professionals
serving the child and family, poten-tial
permanent family for the child
if reunification is not possible, and
loving caretaker for the child (Casey
Family Programs, 2002). We want
them to do everything from shared
parenting to participating in child and
family team meetings to taking the
children to all their appointments.
Really, the surprising part is not that
we have trouble finding families, but
that so many come forward. But come
forward they do. They make the tough
decision to bring a child into their lives.
They go to training. They navigate the
foster home licensing process.
And then, after all that, many leave.
Sometimes the cause is natural and
unavoidable: families move, or there
is a significant life event. But the most
common reason foster parents leave
is a perceived lack of responsiveness,
communication, and support from the
very system that worked so hard to
recruit them (NCR-DR, 2009).
How is this possible? More to the
point, what can we do about it?
Reframing Our Perspective
If you ask foster families if they would
rather be “retained” or “supported,”
which would they choose? Reframing
our perspective from retaining fami-lies
to supporting and developing their
ability to nurture and care for children
can help welcome foster families into
a collaborative and reciprocal rela-tionship.
This is consistent with see-ing
recruitment and retention not as
solitary events, but rather as parts of a
relational process.
The National Resource Center for
Diligent Recruitment (NRC-DR) sug-gests
using a customer service model
focused on making sure each fam-ily
(1) feels respected and valued, (2)
feels like a significant contributor to
the challenging work of child welfare,
(3) gets the support they need, (4)
has opportunities for growth, and (5)
receives timely responses when they
have a need.
A good first step is to assess the
extent to which your agency uses
a customer service approach with
resource families. Conducting satisfac-tion
surveys with current families and
exit interviews or surveys with those
who leave is an excellent starting point.
You can find examples of questions
asked in foster parent exit interviews
here http://bit.ly/2ruYpZu and here
http://bit.ly/2sDcKmq.
The NRC-DR also provides a great
4-page tool agencies can use to gauge
how “family friendly” their recruitment
and retention process is. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2sDeo7Q.
Supporting Families
A challenge in supporting families
is helping them navigate the gap
between their expectations before the
placement and the reality after place-ment,
as well as navigating the impact
fostering has on their family. Routine
home visits with resource parents can
be used to help explore these issues
and provide needed support, so that
challenges don’t become crises. Often
a genuinely listening ear helps fami-lies
process changes and adjust their
expectations.
According to the NRC-DR, sup-porting
families is not just about post-placement
services, but an array of
confidence- and skill-building services
that begin when families first apply to
foster. Selected support ideas include:
• Connecting families during the
licensure process with other wait-ing
or experienced families
• Helping parents self-assess their
strengths and weaknesses
• Training on evidence-based and
trauma-informed practices
• Sharing information about the
child’s history and needs
For a full NRC-DR article on this, visit
http://bit.ly/2ruMOtz.
Developing Families
In a sense, developing families means
every interaction you have with them
increases their ability to meet the needs
of a child in foster care. Families need
opportunities to develop before and
while children are placed with them.
The NRC-DR suggests helping families
self-assess what information, training,
or support they need to “help them
feel confident and capable about par-enting.”
Conducting interviews every
time a placement ends also helps
families develop, since the process
identifies what worked well and where
additional supports or resources may
be needed. Post-placement interviews
can be conducted regardless of the
reason the placement ends. 
Don’t Miss this Customer Service Guide
The NRC-DR has developed a fabulous 50-page
guide to help agencies use customer service to
improve their recruitment and retention efforts and
provide a more positive experience for foster, adop-tive,
and kinship families.
The guide contains a framework emphasizing
processes, relationships, and organizational com-mitment
to good service; offers suggestions for
implementing a customer service approach; and
contains a wealth of ideas and tools agencies can use. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2ssMaMD
7
to the community, so they
jump at the opportunity when
approached.
To build relationships with
a wide array of faiths and
denominations, Megan sought
introductions. For example, a
co-worker who is Hmong introduced her
to her church, and some of her agen-cy’s
African-American board members
introduced her to theirs.
Megan found not all churches were
comfortable having her share infor-mation
in person, but they were will-ing
to make announcements during
services or include information in their
bulletins or newsletters. This year she
asked almost 300 churches to spread
the word about the need for foster and
adoptive parents on “Foster Care Sun-day,”
which is the third Sunday in May.
Encouragement. Megan’s message
for those new to recruiting is: “It gets
easier!” She says the first year on the
job took intense effort to seek out refer-ral
sources and community partners to
support resource parents. Now she
coordinates two or three recruitment-or
support-focused events a month
without having to seek those events
out, because the community calls her.
Supporting Families. Megan
emphasizes supporting the resource
parents you have. Her agency does
this in many ways, including:
• Maintaining a donation “closet”
to help with needs for kids enter-ing
care for the first time;
• Using an email listserv to seek child
specific donations when needed
(e.g., a dresser or soccer cleats);
• Hosting a monthly support group
open to all resource parents in
the area, even those supervised
by other agencies; and
• Coordinating monthly events,
such as a “parents’ night out”
and family-friendly activities.
Catawba also requires foster families
it supervises to take the Annie E. Casey
Foundation-sponsored training Attach-
Recruiting and
retaining resource
families is a criti-cal
but sometimes
lonely job. There
are 183 child-placing agencies in the
state, but the people who bear pri-mary
responsibility for attracting and
supporting families for children in fos-ter
care get few opportunities to share
their experiences and learn from one
another. With this in mind, Practice
Notes contacted Megan Burns, Fos-ter
Parent Recruiter and Trainer at
Catawba County DSS. When Megan
stepped into her job in 2014, she was
new to recruiting. We spoke with her
to find out what she’s learned since
then and what recruitment and reten-tion
look like in her county.
Consistently Getting the Word Out
Is Key. Like other recruiters, Megan
understands that her success depends
in part on constantly getting the mes-sage
out. It’s really true what they say:
many families think about becoming
a foster parent for years before call-ing.
First they see an advertisement.
Then they hear about it on the radio.
Then they listen to a presentation at
church. Finally, they call.
For Megan, getting the word out
includes presentations and booths at
community events and for civic and
religious groups. In her experience
the top three places for referrals are:
(1) word of mouth from current foster/
adoptive families, (2) churches, and
(3) her agency’s website.
But Megan’s clear that recruiting is
only part of the equation. As she puts
it, “If you’re going to recruit, you have
to retain!” Supporting current families
and making sure they are satisfied
with the support your agency provides
is crucial if you want new families to
come on board.
Partnering with Churches. Most
faiths encourage believers to do
what they can to help children. Many
churches also want a way to give back
A Conversation with Catawba County’s Megan Burns
Suggestions and Lessons Learned from a (Relatively) New Recruiter
Megan’s
message for
those new to
recruiting is:
“It gets
easier!”
ment, Regulation, and Compe-tency
(ARC). Families rate this
training highly on satisfaction
surveys and report it helps
them respond more effectively
to children’s negative behav-iors.
Data on whether ARC
training improves placement stability is
being gathered and will be reported at
the end of the grant period.
Kinship Families. Whether or not
they are licensed foster families, kin
caregivers are essential. Indeed, at the
end of April 2017, 25% of children in
DSS custody in North Carolina were
placed with a relative (Duncan, 2017).
Catawba DSS has an entire unit
dedicated to ensuring kin get the sup-port
they need. When relatives are
being considered as a possible place-ment
for a child, the worker who does
the home study becomes the family’s
Kinship Support worker if the child is
placed with them.
Catawba’s Kinship Support work-ers
visit kin caregivers at least once
a month and can accompany them
to important meetings, such as court
dates. Catawba also strongly encour-ages
all kinship families to go through
TIPS-MAPP and become licensed.
Licensure helps reduce the financial
burden some kin families feel, and the
training helps equip them to handle
the challenges of their role.
Questions for Megan? She can be
reached at 828/695-4553; MBurns@
CatawbaCountyNC.gov. 
Coming Soon: DRR Calls!
In October 2017, NC Kids will start
facilitating quarterly DRR calls. Like
the Division’s Staying Connected
calls, DRR calls will be a peer-to-peer
forum featuring information
sharing, special presenters, updates,
and more. These calls are a direct
response to requests from recruit-ment
professionals statewide, who
say they need more ways to connect
with and support one another.
8
Using Data to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Resource Families
Data plays an important part of diligent recruitment. As
with any improvement project, we want to use data wisely
to help make sound, clear choices about what to address
and how to address it. Data needs to be seen as a help-ful
tool that makes our work easier, not as a meaningless
extra step.
Specific to diligent recruitment agencies, need access to:
• Accurate and consistent data on the characteristics of
children in care; and
• Ongoing analysis of the current pool of available
placement options.
As outlined elsewhere in this issue, the DRR Data Profile now
required of all North Carolina county and private child-placing
agencies focuses on precisely these data points.
Case Example: Using CQI to Improve DRR
North Carolina has a continuous quality improve-ment
(CQI) model for child welfare. Known as the REAP/
CQI model, it has six steps (see sidebar) for using data
to improve practice. Let’s see what it looks like when an
agency applies this model to improving diligent recruit-ment
and retention of resource families.
Step 1. Identify and understand the problem
Our fictional agency, County Excellent, reviewed current
data on placement moves to determine where to focus
its efforts. Because current data show higher numbers
of moves for teenagers in its custody, County Excellent
decides to focus on reducing moves for teens.
Next, they review data on specific reasons teens move.
They find the following possible patterns in the data:
• Teens with special needs seem to move more.
• Teens with multiple mental health diagnoses move more.
• Teens whose initial foster care placement was with a
family that had received RPC training* move less.
Step 2. Research the solution
County Excellent spends time looking at examples of suc-cessful
efforts by other agencies to reduce placement
moves for teens.
Step 3. Develop a theory of change
Based on research, County Excellent develops this theory
of change:
• Families are not getting enough support after initial
placement of a teenager in their home.
• Families don’t understand the specific needs of teens.
• The county doesn’t have easy access to the reasons for
placement moves.
Step 4. Adapt or develop
the solution
County Excellent develops
the following strategies:
• Provide increased fol-low-
up and support to
families after they have
teens placed with them
to help address any
new support needs.
• Involve teens in train-ing
prospective and
current foster parents
to help increase par-ents’
understanding of teens’ needs and perspectives.
• Provide additional training to foster parents, cre-ate
peer-to-peer mentoring pairs for foster parents,
reframe messaging about available respite care, and
encourage foster parents to use respite care.
• Add an element to the county’s DRR Data Profile to
capture why moves occur.
Step 5. Implement the plan
County Excellent develops a plan that lays out the steps for
implementing each strategy and a timeline that will imple-ment
changes one at a time. Tasks are assigned to team
members to ensure staff will be ready to implement new
practices effectively.
6. Monitor and assess the plan
County Excellent decides to review its DRR Data Profile
quarterly to determine whether there have been changes
in the number of moves and the reasons for the moves.
This will help them assess the impact of each strategy as it
is implemented.
Resources for Using Data to Improve DRR
Planning for any change can be overwhelming. As with
any new practice or procedure, the sooner you start dis-cussing
ideas and addressing concerns, the easier it will be
to implement changes smoothly. Fortunately, the National
Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment (NRC-DR) has
many resources to assist your agency in using data as you
work to plan, implement, and evaluate a diligent recruit-ment
plan. You can find these resources by visiting http://
www.nrcdr.org/diligent-recruitment/using-data. 
NC ‘s REAP/CQI
Model
1. Identify and understand
the problem
2. Research the solution
3. Develop a theory of
change
4. Adapt or develop the
solution
5. Implement the solution
6. Monitor and assess the
solution
* RPC is shorthand for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s course “Caring for Children Who Have Experienced Trauma: A Workshop for
Resource Parents.” To learn more about the RPC, contact the Center for Child and Family Health (https://www.ccfhnc.org/).
9
References for this Issue
(Children’s Services Practice Notes, v. 22, n. 3 • www.practicenotes.org)
Casey Family Programs. (2002). The promise and the paradox: Recruitment and retention of resource
families. Washington, D C: National Center for Resource Family Support.
Duncan, D. F., Kum, H. C., Flair, K. A., Stewart, C. J., Vaughn, J. S., Guest, S., Rose, R. A., Gwaltney, A. Y., &
Gogan, H. C. (2017). Management Assistance for child welfare, work first, and food & nutrition
services in North Carolina (v3.2). Retrieved 6/13/17 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill Jordan Institute for Families website. URL: http://ssw.unc.edu/ma/
National Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment. (2009). Promising practices in foster parent
retention. Denver, CO: AdoptUSKids, the Adoption Exchange Association. Retrieved from
http://www.nrcdr.org/_assets/files/DR‐Grantees/year‐one/promising‐practices‐in‐foster‐parent‐retention‐
leaflet.pdf
National Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment. (2017). Is your response system family friendly?
Denver, CO: AdoptUSKids, the Adoption Exchange Association. Retrieved from
http://www.nrcdr.org/_assets/files/NRCRRFAP/resources/is‐your‐response‐system‐family‐friendly.
pdf
NC Division of Social Services. (2017a). Licensed child‐placing agencies. Raleigh, NC: NC Department of
Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://www2.ncdhhs.gov/DSS/LICENSING/listings.htm
NC Division of Social Services. (2017b, May 16). Efficiently licensing high‐quality foster parents [webinar].
Chapel Hill, NC: UNC School of Social Work and NC Department of Health and Human Resources.
Retrieved from http://fcrp.unc.edu/webinars.asp
Sirratt, E. (2016, July 21). ‘Foster to adopt’ doesn’t exist. The Call in White County.
https://thecallinwhitecounty.com/2016/07/21/foster‐to‐adopt‐doesnt‐exist/
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2017). North Carolina [context data]. Washington, DC:
Administration for Children and Families. Retrieved from
https://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/cwodatasite/pdf/north%20carolina.html

(Fig. 3) underscore the importance of doing
everything possible to find and hang on to
families for kids in care.
Knowing we can do better, a broad array
of NC stakeholders has developed a plan to
help us bring about needed changes. This
article will explain our state’s vision for the
future, our new Diligent Recruitment and
Retention (DRR) plan, and what it means for
you and your agency.
A Need for Improvement
In 2015 federal reviewers were concerned
our state could not show that routine, state-wide
diligent efforts were being made to
find families for children with special needs
and families that reflect the ethnic and racial
diversity of the children in DSS custody. They
also noted that NC did not provide con-sistent
standards for diligent
Volume 22, Number 3
June 2017
This publication for child
welfare professionals is
produced by the North
Carolina Division of Social
Services and the Family
and Children’s Resource
Program, part of the Jordan
Institute for Families within
the School of Social Work
at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In summarizing research, we
try to give you new ideas for
refining your practice. How-ever,
this publication is not
intended to replace child
welfare training, regular su-pervision,
or peer consulta-tion—
only to enhance them.
Let us hear from you!
To comment about some-thing
that appears in Prac-tice
Notes, please contact:
John McMahon
Jordan Institute for Families
School of Social Work
UNC–Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550
jdmcmaho@unc.edu
Newsletter Staff
Sarah Marsh
John McMahon
Laura Phipps
Visit Our Website
www.practicenotes.org
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment of Families
for Children in Foster Care
Recruitment and retention of families for
children in foster care matters a great deal.
When we have enough foster and adop-tive
parents and kin caregivers, it is easier
to place children in their home communities
and school districts. More siblings can stay
together. Careful matching with caregivers
is easier. Children awaiting adoption don’t
have to wait as long for forever families.
Understanding this, North Carolina built
a solid network of state, county, and private
agencies to find and support resource families.
See Figure 1 for a snapshot of this network.
But we’ve had a bit of a wake-up call.
In 2015, federal reviewers concluded we
need to improve our system for recruiting
and retaining resource families. Rising num-bers
of children in foster care (Fig. 2) and
declines in adoptions of waiting children continued next page
NC Foster Care & Adoption Facts
As of April 30, 2017
Foster Care Agencies
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
• 81 private child-placing agencies
• 97 residential facilities
Foster Homes
6,843 licensed foster homes:
• 38% were family foster homes
supervised by county DSS agencies
• 58% were either family or
therapeutic foster homes
supervised by private agencies
• 4% were residential/group/
institutions
Adoption Agencies
• 100 public/county DSS agencies
• 42 private adoption agencies
Adoptive Homes
• 11,335 children adopted from
foster care from 2007 to 2014
Sources: NC DSS, 2017a & 2017b; USDHHS, 2017
FIGURE 1 FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
Duncan, et al., 2017
US DHHS, 2017
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
Number of Children in Foster Care in NC
Number of NC Children Adopted from Foster Care
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
1,400
1,600
1,800
2
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment continued from previous page
Beliefs behind the Plan
recruitment, nor did it have a system
for monitoring diligent recruitment.
After the federal review, NC deter-mined
that strengthening and refram-ing
our state’s diligent recruitment
plan would be the best way forward.
As part of its federal Program Improve-ment
Plan (PIP), NC promised to recre-ate
our DRR plan and address federal
reviewers’ concerns by Dec. 31, 2018.
Creating the Plan
By the time the PIP was approved on
Jan. 1, 2017, efforts were already well
underway to improve diligent recruit-ment
in NC. In fall 2016, the NC Divi-sion
of Social Services approached the
National Resource Center for Diligent
Recruitment (NRC-DR) for assistance.
By October 2016, a workgroup dedi-cated
to creating a new DRR plan
had formed. The group’s participants
included representatives from the
Division, county DSS agencies, and
private agencies. Two consultants
from the NRC-DR offered the group
guidance and support.
To determine what should be in
the new plan, the workgroup held
regional stakeholder meetings
between October 2016 and Janu-ary
2017. These were attended by
more than 200 people with ties to
the recruitment of resource families,
and included Division staff, county
DSS staff, private agency staff, former
foster youth, foster/adoptive parents,
GALs, and others.
The workgroup then compiled the
notes from these meetings and, with
the help of the NRC-DR, crafted the
plan in spring 2017. This was an
extremely collaborative process; the
plan represents the hard work of hun-dreds
of people across the state who
are invested in the diligent recruitment
and retention of resource parents.
The Division released the new DRR
plan June 15, 2017. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2stwqsF.
NC’s Vision for DRR
Although many people and agen-cies
in North Carolina contribute to
recruitment and retention of resource
families, we are all ultimately a part
of one, unified child welfare system.
The new DRR plan is a vehicle to help
us improve our results and the way we
work together. As a starting point, the
plan lays out the beliefs and values at
the heart of what we do. You can find
these in the box at right.
The plan then articulates a long-term
vision of a future in which North
Carolina will eventually have:
• A structured statewide approach
to recruitment and retention.
• An efficient recruitment pro-cess
that is easy for prospective
resource families to understand.
• Placement stability for children
served by the foster care system.
• Placement of children in their
home communities and school
districts.
• Sibling groups placed together.
• A diverse population of foster and
adoptive families, including but
not limited to diversity of ethnicity,
race, language, and location.
• Public and private child welfare
staff who are familiar with North
Carolina’s Diligent Recruitment
and Retention Plan.
• Consistent engagement in techni-cal
assistance, information shar-ing,
and collaboration around
DRR by the Division, county DSS
agencies, and private agencies.
• Statewide use of a customer ser-vice
approach to DRR, with posi-tive
feedback from foster and
adoptive families.
• Involvement in the DRR process
by resource families and youth
served by the foster care pro-gram.
• Statewide capacity to collect,
assess, and interpret data to
inform DRR activities.
Building on a Solid Foundation
Before we delve into the changes the
new plan brings, a few words of reas-surance.
While the plan brings new
expectations, the basics of our work
will remain the same. We will continue
to have a state-supervised, county-administered
system in which coun-ties
partner to varying degrees with
private agencies to recruit resource
families and supervise foster homes
and provide adoption services. Pro-spective
resource parents will still be
free to choose to be licensed as foster
parents and/or be approved as adop-tive
parents by either a public or pri-vate
agency. And, the NC Division of
Social Services will continue to provide
supports to public and private agen-cies,
especially through its NC Kids
Adoption and Foster Care Network.
New Expectations
What does this new plan mean for
NC’s child-placing agencies and child
welfare professionals?
County agencies must develop
annual DRR Plans. The statewide DRR
plan provides a template agencies
must use to develop this annual plan.
Using this template will ensure county
child welfare agencies and the state
take a consistent, structured approach
to DRR, one that involves measuring
progress toward concrete goals. Note:
• Value all prospective,
current, and former
foster and adoptive
parents
• Value all caregivers
and encourage the licensure of kin-ship
placements whenever possible
• Provide and value opportunities for
support, engagement, and training
of resource families
• We have an obligation to build our
capacity to use data to inform dili-gent
recruitment and retention of
foster and adoptive parents
3
ITEMS ON DATA PROFILE
• Number of children in care
• Characteristics of children in care
– Race/Ethnicity
– Age
• Number where ICWA applies
• Characteristics of families available
– Race/Ethnicity
• Average time from initial inquiry to
licensure
• Total licensed beds
• Total truly available beds
• Children placed out of county and/or
with outside agencies due to lack of
available families
• Number of placement disruptions or
placement changes
• Option to track additional data points
while plans begin with a template, the
expectation is that each county’s plan
will be unique, reflecting differences
in culture, geography, etc.
Each county agency’s DRR plan will
have three parts:
1. Information Gathering. Here the
agency captures details about how it
staffs and supports recruitment and
retention, the data it collects and uses
to monitor DRR, the strategies it uses,
the barriers it experiences, and more.
2. Plan Development Process. Every
plan should be developed with input
from an inclusive group of stakehold-ers.
In this section the agency records
things such as who was involved in
plan development, how the agency
will build the capacity needed to
measure outcomes and success, and
whether the agency has technical
assistance needs related to DRR.
3. Plan and Measurement. This part
of the plan lays out concrete strategies
for achieving the four goals identified
in the box above. Agencies have the
option of setting additional goals for
themselves in their plans.
Each county’s DRR plan will also
serve as its annual Multi-Ethnic Place-ment
Act (MEPA) plan. Please refer
to the new statewide DRR plan for
guidance and information about the
overlap between DRR and the require-ments
of MEPA.
When their plans are completed,
counties will submit them to their
assigned NC Kids Consultant. If
needed, the consultant will work with
the county to develop a plan for tech-nical
assistance around DRR.
Private child-placing agencies are
encouraged—but not required—to
develop annual DRR plans. Private
agencies that develop DRR plans are
encouraged to share them with the
Division and the county DSS agencies
with whom they partner.
All agencies must develop and
use data profiles. So that we can
make data-driven decisions regard-ing
diligent recruitment and retention,
each county DSS and each private
child-placing agency must complete
a Diligent Recruitment and Reten-tion
Data Profile. This profile must be
updated quarterly and shared with
the Division every year on Aug. 1.
The Division will then share compre-hensive
statewide data on an annual
basis to help inform ongoing local-ized
and statewide recruitment and
retention efforts.
To develop their data profiles,
agencies should use the DRR Plan’s
Data Profile template. The box above
depicts the kind of data points col-lected
in this template.
The NC Division of Social Services
understands that agencies currently
vary widely in their capacity work with
DRR data. If your agency needs tech-nical
assistance in this area, please
contact NC Kids (nc.kids@dhhs.
nc.gov; 877-625-4371).
Implementation Timeline
DRR Plans. In the coming year
counties will develop and submit their
DRR plans to their assigned NC Kids
Consultant in two cohorts, or phases.
Phase 1 counties must submit their
plans by Feb. 1, 2018. Phase 2 coun-ties
must submit plans by May 1,
2018. Please refer to the next page to
see which phase your county is in and
who your county’s consultant is.
All DRR plans submitted next year
will be for SFY 2018-19 and be effec-tive
July 1, 2018. The expectation is
that county agencies will update and
resubmit these plans to their assigned
NC Kids Consultant by September 1
of each year, starting in SFY 2019-20.
Data Profiles. County DSS and
private child-placing agencies must
submit their first DRR data profile to
the Division on August 1, 2019. Data
profiles must be updated and resub-mitted
to the Division by August 1 of
each year thereafter.
Conclusion
North Carolina has a new plan and
approach for the diligent recruitment
and retention of foster and adoptive
families for children in foster care.
This plan and approach will help us
increase our use of data, the extent
to which we involve key stakehold-ers,
and the quality of our customer
service. This, in turn, will ultimately
strengthen our ability to achieve the
outcomes we seek for children and
their families. 
NC Refocuses on Diligent Recruitment continued from previous page
FOUR DRR PLAN GOALS
1. Recruit and maintain a sufficient
pool of ethnically and racially
diverse families who can provide
ongoing safety for and meet the
needs of children in foster care
2. State, counties, and private child-placing
agencies have the capacity
and ability to use data to inform
and monitor diligent recruitment
and retention efforts throughout
NC
3. Excellent customer service pro-vided
to prospective, current, and
former foster, adoptive, and kin-ship
families
4. Excellent customer service provided
to internal and external community
partners/stakeholders
4
Implementation of NC’s Diligent Recruitment Plan:
County Assignments by Phase
Phase 1 Counties (DRR plan due to NC Kids Consultant by Feb. 1, 2018)
Alamance Davidson Macon Randolph Yadkin
Alexander Davie Madison Robeson Yancey
Alleghany Duplin Martin Rutherford
Avery Edgecombe McDowell Stanly
Bladen Gaston Mitchell Stokes
Brunswick Gates Montgomery Surry
Burke Granville Moore Swain
Caldwell Halifax Nash Warren
Catawba Haywood Northampton Wayne
Chowan Hertford Pasquotank Transylvania
Cleveland Iredell Perquimans Tyrell
Columbus Johnston Person Union
Currituck Lee Polk Vance
Phase 2 Counties (DRR plan due to NC Kids Consultant by May 1, 2018)
Anson Dare Jones Rockingham
Ashe Durham Lenoir Rowan
Beaufort Forsyth Lincoln Sampson
Bertie Franklin Mecklenburg Scotland
Buncombe Graham Mitchell Wake
Cabarrus Greene New Hanover Washington
Camden Guilford Onslow Watauga
Caswell Harnett Orange Wilkes
Chatham Henderson Pamlico Wilson
Cherokee Hoke Pender
Clay Hyde Pitt
Craven Jackson Richmond
NC Kids Consultant County Assignments
Alamance through Cumberland Johnston through Polk
Shirley Williams Kerri Shiflett
919-527-6404 919-527-6366
shirley.williams@dhhs.nc.gov kerri.shiflett@dhhs.nc.gov
Currituck through Jackson Randolph through Yancey
Britt Cloudsdale Mary Mackins
919-527-6358 919-527-6287
britt.cloudsdale@dhhs.nc.gov mary.mackins@dhhs.nc.gov
Let’s Be Clear with Families: “Fostering to Adopt” Is Not Really a Thing
If your responsibilities include talking to prospective foster
and adoptive parents, it is likely you’ve heard families
say they want to “foster to adopt.” It’s a common phrase
and, at first glance, conveys a simple meaning: the family
would like to foster with the end goal of adopting a child
placed in their home.
Because this phrase is so widely used, many families—
and even some social workers—are confused to learn that
“fostering to adopt,” as a concept, does not exist. Indeed,
because the “foster to adopt” mindset can undermine our
efforts to help children and families, we must be ready to
set the record straight whenever this term comes up.
Confl icting Goals
To see why the “foster to adopt” idea is problematic, con-sider
the primary goals of foster care and adoption. When
a child enters foster care, the goal of the child’s team is
almost always to reunify the child with the child’s family.
As a member of the team, the foster parent’s role is to
care for the child, keep them safe, and meet their ongoing
needs until it is safe for the child to return home.
As members of the team, foster parents must do what
they can to maintain and strengthen the bond between chil-dren
and their families. They must buy in to the practice of
shared parenting, which builds trust between the biological
parents and foster parents and encourages consistency and
security for the child. Shared parenting only works when all
members of the team view the child’s stay in foster care as
temporary and are motivated to achieve reunification.
The primary goal of adoption, conversely, is perma-nency
with someone other than the biological parents.
Simply put, “foster to adopt” doesn’t work because the
goals of foster care and adoption are inherently in conflict.
When we ignore this conflict and license families whose
primary aim is to adopt their foster child, we set the stage
for disappointment and disaster. These families may be
unwilling to engage in activities that would help us achieve
reunification. In the worst cases, they may even sabotage
the team’s efforts, which can lead to placement disruptions,
longer foster care stays, and more trauma for children.
Send a Clear Message
So, what’s to be done? As professionals, we need to be
clear with families that the idea that people can “foster to
adopt” is a myth. It’s our responsibility to ensure families
understand the primary goal of foster care, and to prop-erly
assess the motivations of families who seek to foster.
As we assess families, we should encourage them to care-fully
and deliberately search their hearts to understand
their own motivations. Being open to the idea of adoption
is very different from having a goal of adoption.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with
wanting to permanently add children to
one’s family through adoption. We owe
a great debt to everyone willing to open
their home to our kids in this way!
But if we identify prospective foster
families we think may not be able to put
their personal adoption goals aside as
foster parents, our choice is clear. We should never try to
convince anyone to pursue fostering if it would not be a
good fit for them. If you are a foster parent recruiter, being
clear that there is no such thing as “foster to adopt” may
mean referring more families to agencies serving families
who exclusively seek to adopt. In the long run, though, this
is a better use of your resources, and will result in better
outcomes for children and families.
In North Carolina there are many different agencies
with different methods, but we are all ultimately a part of
one, unified child welfare system. If your agency is not the
best fit for a family because of their motivations or because
of your focus area, there is likely another agency out there
for that family. Partnering across agencies as we recruit
foster and adoptive parents opens more homes for more
kids, and helps children exit foster care sooner. 
Words to Use with Families
Here are some things it can be helpful to say to help fami-lies
understand the different goals of foster care and adop-tion,
and why understanding their motivation for fostering
is so important.
If you keep thinking about adoption every time you get
a placement, it’s going to make your role as a foster parent
very difficult. When the team is working on reunification, you
may find yourself hoping it falls apart so you get the chance
to adopt. When it’s time to engage in shared parenting, your
heart won’t be in it 100%.
Being a foster family who is open to the idea of adop-tion
is MUCH different than a foster family with the goal of
adopting.
The bottom line is, check your motivation. Examine your
heart. If you became a foster parent, would you be looking
at each child as potentially being your own, or would you be
able to cultivate a good relationship between the children
and biological family and love the children as if they were
your own?
If the answer is yes, you have nothing to worry about.
If you’re not sure or your answer is no, you may need to
think a bit more before pursuing licensure.
Adapted from Sirratt, 2016
by Britt Cloudsdale, NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care Network, NC Division of Social Services
Britt Cloudsdale
5
6
Supporting and Developing the Resource Families You Have
We ask a lot from resource fami-lies.
We want them to play a variety
of complex roles: reunification part-ner
with the birth family, contributing
member of the team of professionals
serving the child and family, poten-tial
permanent family for the child
if reunification is not possible, and
loving caretaker for the child (Casey
Family Programs, 2002). We want
them to do everything from shared
parenting to participating in child and
family team meetings to taking the
children to all their appointments.
Really, the surprising part is not that
we have trouble finding families, but
that so many come forward. But come
forward they do. They make the tough
decision to bring a child into their lives.
They go to training. They navigate the
foster home licensing process.
And then, after all that, many leave.
Sometimes the cause is natural and
unavoidable: families move, or there
is a significant life event. But the most
common reason foster parents leave
is a perceived lack of responsiveness,
communication, and support from the
very system that worked so hard to
recruit them (NCR-DR, 2009).
How is this possible? More to the
point, what can we do about it?
Reframing Our Perspective
If you ask foster families if they would
rather be “retained” or “supported,”
which would they choose? Reframing
our perspective from retaining fami-lies
to supporting and developing their
ability to nurture and care for children
can help welcome foster families into
a collaborative and reciprocal rela-tionship.
This is consistent with see-ing
recruitment and retention not as
solitary events, but rather as parts of a
relational process.
The National Resource Center for
Diligent Recruitment (NRC-DR) sug-gests
using a customer service model
focused on making sure each fam-ily
(1) feels respected and valued, (2)
feels like a significant contributor to
the challenging work of child welfare,
(3) gets the support they need, (4)
has opportunities for growth, and (5)
receives timely responses when they
have a need.
A good first step is to assess the
extent to which your agency uses
a customer service approach with
resource families. Conducting satisfac-tion
surveys with current families and
exit interviews or surveys with those
who leave is an excellent starting point.
You can find examples of questions
asked in foster parent exit interviews
here http://bit.ly/2ruYpZu and here
http://bit.ly/2sDcKmq.
The NRC-DR also provides a great
4-page tool agencies can use to gauge
how “family friendly” their recruitment
and retention process is. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2sDeo7Q.
Supporting Families
A challenge in supporting families
is helping them navigate the gap
between their expectations before the
placement and the reality after place-ment,
as well as navigating the impact
fostering has on their family. Routine
home visits with resource parents can
be used to help explore these issues
and provide needed support, so that
challenges don’t become crises. Often
a genuinely listening ear helps fami-lies
process changes and adjust their
expectations.
According to the NRC-DR, sup-porting
families is not just about post-placement
services, but an array of
confidence- and skill-building services
that begin when families first apply to
foster. Selected support ideas include:
• Connecting families during the
licensure process with other wait-ing
or experienced families
• Helping parents self-assess their
strengths and weaknesses
• Training on evidence-based and
trauma-informed practices
• Sharing information about the
child’s history and needs
For a full NRC-DR article on this, visit
http://bit.ly/2ruMOtz.
Developing Families
In a sense, developing families means
every interaction you have with them
increases their ability to meet the needs
of a child in foster care. Families need
opportunities to develop before and
while children are placed with them.
The NRC-DR suggests helping families
self-assess what information, training,
or support they need to “help them
feel confident and capable about par-enting.”
Conducting interviews every
time a placement ends also helps
families develop, since the process
identifies what worked well and where
additional supports or resources may
be needed. Post-placement interviews
can be conducted regardless of the
reason the placement ends. 
Don’t Miss this Customer Service Guide
The NRC-DR has developed a fabulous 50-page
guide to help agencies use customer service to
improve their recruitment and retention efforts and
provide a more positive experience for foster, adop-tive,
and kinship families.
The guide contains a framework emphasizing
processes, relationships, and organizational com-mitment
to good service; offers suggestions for
implementing a customer service approach; and
contains a wealth of ideas and tools agencies can use. You can find it
here: http://bit.ly/2ssMaMD
7
to the community, so they
jump at the opportunity when
approached.
To build relationships with
a wide array of faiths and
denominations, Megan sought
introductions. For example, a
co-worker who is Hmong introduced her
to her church, and some of her agen-cy’s
African-American board members
introduced her to theirs.
Megan found not all churches were
comfortable having her share infor-mation
in person, but they were will-ing
to make announcements during
services or include information in their
bulletins or newsletters. This year she
asked almost 300 churches to spread
the word about the need for foster and
adoptive parents on “Foster Care Sun-day,”
which is the third Sunday in May.
Encouragement. Megan’s message
for those new to recruiting is: “It gets
easier!” She says the first year on the
job took intense effort to seek out refer-ral
sources and community partners to
support resource parents. Now she
coordinates two or three recruitment-or
support-focused events a month
without having to seek those events
out, because the community calls her.
Supporting Families. Megan
emphasizes supporting the resource
parents you have. Her agency does
this in many ways, including:
• Maintaining a donation “closet”
to help with needs for kids enter-ing
care for the first time;
• Using an email listserv to seek child
specific donations when needed
(e.g., a dresser or soccer cleats);
• Hosting a monthly support group
open to all resource parents in
the area, even those supervised
by other agencies; and
• Coordinating monthly events,
such as a “parents’ night out”
and family-friendly activities.
Catawba also requires foster families
it supervises to take the Annie E. Casey
Foundation-sponsored training Attach-
Recruiting and
retaining resource
families is a criti-cal
but sometimes
lonely job. There
are 183 child-placing agencies in the
state, but the people who bear pri-mary
responsibility for attracting and
supporting families for children in fos-ter
care get few opportunities to share
their experiences and learn from one
another. With this in mind, Practice
Notes contacted Megan Burns, Fos-ter
Parent Recruiter and Trainer at
Catawba County DSS. When Megan
stepped into her job in 2014, she was
new to recruiting. We spoke with her
to find out what she’s learned since
then and what recruitment and reten-tion
look like in her county.
Consistently Getting the Word Out
Is Key. Like other recruiters, Megan
understands that her success depends
in part on constantly getting the mes-sage
out. It’s really true what they say:
many families think about becoming
a foster parent for years before call-ing.
First they see an advertisement.
Then they hear about it on the radio.
Then they listen to a presentation at
church. Finally, they call.
For Megan, getting the word out
includes presentations and booths at
community events and for civic and
religious groups. In her experience
the top three places for referrals are:
(1) word of mouth from current foster/
adoptive families, (2) churches, and
(3) her agency’s website.
But Megan’s clear that recruiting is
only part of the equation. As she puts
it, “If you’re going to recruit, you have
to retain!” Supporting current families
and making sure they are satisfied
with the support your agency provides
is crucial if you want new families to
come on board.
Partnering with Churches. Most
faiths encourage believers to do
what they can to help children. Many
churches also want a way to give back
A Conversation with Catawba County’s Megan Burns
Suggestions and Lessons Learned from a (Relatively) New Recruiter
Megan’s
message for
those new to
recruiting is:
“It gets
easier!”
ment, Regulation, and Compe-tency
(ARC). Families rate this
training highly on satisfaction
surveys and report it helps
them respond more effectively
to children’s negative behav-iors.
Data on whether ARC
training improves placement stability is
being gathered and will be reported at
the end of the grant period.
Kinship Families. Whether or not
they are licensed foster families, kin
caregivers are essential. Indeed, at the
end of April 2017, 25% of children in
DSS custody in North Carolina were
placed with a relative (Duncan, 2017).
Catawba DSS has an entire unit
dedicated to ensuring kin get the sup-port
they need. When relatives are
being considered as a possible place-ment
for a child, the worker who does
the home study becomes the family’s
Kinship Support worker if the child is
placed with them.
Catawba’s Kinship Support work-ers
visit kin caregivers at least once
a month and can accompany them
to important meetings, such as court
dates. Catawba also strongly encour-ages
all kinship families to go through
TIPS-MAPP and become licensed.
Licensure helps reduce the financial
burden some kin families feel, and the
training helps equip them to handle
the challenges of their role.
Questions for Megan? She can be
reached at 828/695-4553; MBurns@
CatawbaCountyNC.gov. 
Coming Soon: DRR Calls!
In October 2017, NC Kids will start
facilitating quarterly DRR calls. Like
the Division’s Staying Connected
calls, DRR calls will be a peer-to-peer
forum featuring information
sharing, special presenters, updates,
and more. These calls are a direct
response to requests from recruit-ment
professionals statewide, who
say they need more ways to connect
with and support one another.
8
Using Data to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Resource Families
Data plays an important part of diligent recruitment. As
with any improvement project, we want to use data wisely
to help make sound, clear choices about what to address
and how to address it. Data needs to be seen as a help-ful
tool that makes our work easier, not as a meaningless
extra step.
Specific to diligent recruitment agencies, need access to:
• Accurate and consistent data on the characteristics of
children in care; and
• Ongoing analysis of the current pool of available
placement options.
As outlined elsewhere in this issue, the DRR Data Profile now
required of all North Carolina county and private child-placing
agencies focuses on precisely these data points.
Case Example: Using CQI to Improve DRR
North Carolina has a continuous quality improve-ment
(CQI) model for child welfare. Known as the REAP/
CQI model, it has six steps (see sidebar) for using data
to improve practice. Let’s see what it looks like when an
agency applies this model to improving diligent recruit-ment
and retention of resource families.
Step 1. Identify and understand the problem
Our fictional agency, County Excellent, reviewed current
data on placement moves to determine where to focus
its efforts. Because current data show higher numbers
of moves for teenagers in its custody, County Excellent
decides to focus on reducing moves for teens.
Next, they review data on specific reasons teens move.
They find the following possible patterns in the data:
• Teens with special needs seem to move more.
• Teens with multiple mental health diagnoses move more.
• Teens whose initial foster care placement was with a
family that had received RPC training* move less.
Step 2. Research the solution
County Excellent spends time looking at examples of suc-cessful
efforts by other agencies to reduce placement
moves for teens.
Step 3. Develop a theory of change
Based on research, County Excellent develops this theory
of change:
• Families are not getting enough support after initial
placement of a teenager in their home.
• Families don’t understand the specific needs of teens.
• The county doesn’t have easy access to the reasons for
placement moves.
Step 4. Adapt or develop
the solution
County Excellent develops
the following strategies:
• Provide increased fol-low-
up and support to
families after they have
teens placed with them
to help address any
new support needs.
• Involve teens in train-ing
prospective and
current foster parents
to help increase par-ents’
understanding of teens’ needs and perspectives.
• Provide additional training to foster parents, cre-ate
peer-to-peer mentoring pairs for foster parents,
reframe messaging about available respite care, and
encourage foster parents to use respite care.
• Add an element to the county’s DRR Data Profile to
capture why moves occur.
Step 5. Implement the plan
County Excellent develops a plan that lays out the steps for
implementing each strategy and a timeline that will imple-ment
changes one at a time. Tasks are assigned to team
members to ensure staff will be ready to implement new
practices effectively.
6. Monitor and assess the plan
County Excellent decides to review its DRR Data Profile
quarterly to determine whether there have been changes
in the number of moves and the reasons for the moves.
This will help them assess the impact of each strategy as it
is implemented.
Resources for Using Data to Improve DRR
Planning for any change can be overwhelming. As with
any new practice or procedure, the sooner you start dis-cussing
ideas and addressing concerns, the easier it will be
to implement changes smoothly. Fortunately, the National
Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment (NRC-DR) has
many resources to assist your agency in using data as you
work to plan, implement, and evaluate a diligent recruit-ment
plan. You can find these resources by visiting http://
www.nrcdr.org/diligent-recruitment/using-data. 
NC ‘s REAP/CQI
Model
1. Identify and understand
the problem
2. Research the solution
3. Develop a theory of
change
4. Adapt or develop the
solution
5. Implement the solution
6. Monitor and assess the
solution
* RPC is shorthand for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s course “Caring for Children Who Have Experienced Trauma: A Workshop for
Resource Parents.” To learn more about the RPC, contact the Center for Child and Family Health (https://www.ccfhnc.org/).
9
References for this Issue
(Children’s Services Practice Notes, v. 22, n. 3 • www.practicenotes.org)
Casey Family Programs. (2002). The promise and the paradox: Recruitment and retention of resource
families. Washington, D C: National Center for Resource Family Support.
Duncan, D. F., Kum, H. C., Flair, K. A., Stewart, C. J., Vaughn, J. S., Guest, S., Rose, R. A., Gwaltney, A. Y., &
Gogan, H. C. (2017). Management Assistance for child welfare, work first, and food & nutrition
services in North Carolina (v3.2). Retrieved 6/13/17 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill Jordan Institute for Families website. URL: http://ssw.unc.edu/ma/
National Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment. (2009). Promising practices in foster parent
retention. Denver, CO: AdoptUSKids, the Adoption Exchange Association. Retrieved from
http://www.nrcdr.org/_assets/files/DR‐Grantees/year‐one/promising‐practices‐in‐foster‐parent‐retention‐
leaflet.pdf
National Resource Center for Diligent Recruitment. (2017). Is your response system family friendly?
Denver, CO: AdoptUSKids, the Adoption Exchange Association. Retrieved from
http://www.nrcdr.org/_assets/files/NRCRRFAP/resources/is‐your‐response‐system‐family‐friendly.
pdf
NC Division of Social Services. (2017a). Licensed child‐placing agencies. Raleigh, NC: NC Department of
Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://www2.ncdhhs.gov/DSS/LICENSING/listings.htm
NC Division of Social Services. (2017b, May 16). Efficiently licensing high‐quality foster parents [webinar].
Chapel Hill, NC: UNC School of Social Work and NC Department of Health and Human Resources.
Retrieved from http://fcrp.unc.edu/webinars.asp
Sirratt, E. (2016, July 21). ‘Foster to adopt’ doesn’t exist. The Call in White County.
https://thecallinwhitecounty.com/2016/07/21/foster‐to‐adopt‐doesnt‐exist/
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2017). North Carolina [context data]. Washington, DC:
Administration for Children and Families. Retrieved from
https://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/cwodatasite/pdf/north%20carolina.html